Under Her Skin (16 page)

Shift
.

I was far enough away now.

Be the change I need to be.

Shift
, that inner voice commanded. A voice that was mine, but not mine.

I am serpent.

No
, another part of me remembered.

Shift
.
Human.

The moonlight glinted on the water.

No. Not human. Not yet.

Concentrating, I pushed my way into a water-form.

Water moccasin. Sleek and black and able to cross the river easily.

I slipped into the water and continued toward the campgrounds.

* * *

Kade.

His name echoed through my mind, long after I had forgotten anything else about why I was traveling, or why. I merely whipped my body from side to side, moving as quickly as I could through the landscape.

When I finally came upon a human campsite, I paused, certain that it was important in some way. Flicking my tongue out, I pulled in the warm night air, redolent of campfire smoke and the taste of human sweat and sleep. Safe enough to explore.

Why did I need to stop here?

I raised up as high as I could, weaving back and forth, testing the air.

There. Something sun-warmed and slightly damp with river-water, permeated with humanity.

Then I saw it: a rope line stretched between two trees with several bathing suits and t-shirts, left out to dry after a dip in the river.

The human part of my mind struggled to form thoughts, trapped as it was deep inside my serpentine brain.

Kade
.

These would help me reach Kade.

But first I had to find a place to shift.

Retreating into the scrubby trees a few yards away, I pulled on the Earth magic again, working to draw mass back to myself. The magic was weaker here than it had been even at the cave. In my serpent form, my concentration wavered, making it harder to draw on that power. My entire body convulsed with the effort, and then, as if something inside me snapped, the sparkling light coalesced around me, pouring into the shift. When the glare faded from my eyes, I lay curled in a tight ball, whimpering.

Get up, Lindi.

You have to get help to save those women.

Even my growing sense of desperation couldn’t force my aching muscles to move more quickly. Nonetheless, I pulled myself up to standing and staggered toward the clothesline.

Several pairs of men’s swim trunks hung from the rope. I tugged down the smallest pair and stepped into them, tying the drawstring tight around my waist.

Pulling a stolen t-shirt over my head, I considered my next move. My head pounded. Too many shifts in too short a time combined with a lack of food or drink, and who knew what drugs Scott had slipped me, making me dizzy and sick.

I could wake these campers, beg them for help, see if any of them had a cell phone. Or I could keep moving, try to find a better way out of here.

Wherever
here
was.

I didn’t see any cars. These people must have backpacked in from somewhere else. I vaguely recalled that the Dinosaur Valley park had camping areas that were inaccessible by car.

God. I couldn’t think straight.

I didn’t even have any shoes.

Perhaps that, at least, could be remedied. I scanned the small clearing, looking for anything useful.

Spying a pair of men’s flip-flops, I slid my toes into them. A plastic cooler sitting right outside the tent looked promising, too. These guys hadn’t had to hike too far in if one of them had lugged that.

As quietly as I could, I unlatched the lid and swung it open. Inside were several cans of beer, a few water bottles, and a package of lunch meat.

I grabbed the meat and some of the water.

I couldn’t be that far from the parking lot. And from there, it was only a short walk to the ranger’s hut.

Involving normal humans was a bad idea. Given his treatment of shifter children and human women, I suspected that Scott wouldn’t hesitate to murder the men who were camping here, out for a guys’ weekend, from the looks of it.

I would never be able to forgive myself if I got them killed.

Retreating again to the cover of the foliage surrounding the campsite, I downed one bottle of water before skirting the site and moving back down along the river. Walking as quickly as I could while eating, I ate the entire package of lunch meat. I wasn’t used to shifting this much so quickly, and that last change felt like something had torn inside me. I could only hope that my usually accelerated healing worked for magical injuries, too.

The food and water helped some. At least my head wasn’t throbbing any longer. I felt like I was thinking more clearly. But it was taking longer than usual to regain all my human faculties, maybe as a side-effect of choosing an animal shape so different from my usual one. I was far from the campers’ site when it finally occurred to me that there had probably been a trail directly from the campers’ clearing back to the parking lot, and from the lot to the ranger.

I wondered how much of my determination to stick to the cover that ran right next to the river came from my animal side. It felt safer, even as my human mind highlighted the logic of searching for a trail.

As comforting as I found it to follow the river, it was time to change my strategy, I decided. But then, as I swung around a bend in the river, I realized that I wouldn’t have to. Just in front of me was the swimming hole with the fossilized dinosaur print on its edge.

I knew exactly where I was and where to go from here.

Now I just needed to find Kade.

I considered what I knew as I waded through the shallow water.

Scott was fully human—I was certain of it. I might not have recognized shifter scents before, but the last few weeks had driven home the differences between how humans and shifters smelled.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t carry a lamia gene.

I tried to remember Kade’s mini-lecture about shapeshifter genetics. If Scott really was trying to breed with humans to create new lamias, it meant he would need a human woman who had lamia genes.

Given what little I knew about lamia culture, I doubted there were very many cross-breeds out there.

How many women had Scott raped in this crazed plan? How many had he killed?

I had to get help.

I’m pretty sure the park ranger manning the entry booth thought I was crazy when I came stumbling up to her window in my stolen, too-big clothes and shoes, clutching a wad of bologna in one hand and an empty water bottle in the other.

“Phone,” I gasped. “I need to use your phone. It’s an emergency.”

“Can I help you with something, sweetie?” she asked, her thin lips twisted in worry. “Is there a problem with your campsite?”

In the several hours it had taken me to get here, it had never occurred to me that I would have to come up with a story to cover what was really going on.

I couldn’t tell this muscular woman in her khaki shorts and green shirt that a snake woman and her rapist son were trying to breed a new race of lamias.

She would think I was nuts.

I had to reach Kade.

What would she believe?

“My boyfriend and I had a fight last night and he left. My phone, my clothes, everything was in the car. Please, I just need to reach a friend to come pick me up.” There. That should do it.

With a nod, she opened the door to the booth and ushered me in, pointing to a stool in one corner. “Have a seat. The phone is right there on the counter.”

* * *

“When they find me gone, they’re going to realize something has happened,” I said into the phone receiver. The ranger had draped a blanket around me and given me the nominal privacy of the booth as she stepped out to make a few phone calls on her cell.

“If you’ve been gone as long as you think, they probably already have.” Kade’s voice echoed across the miles. He was already headed toward me—had been in his truck searching for hours and wasn’t very far away at all.

I shrugged, though he couldn’t see it. “My sense of time is completely screwed up. It feels like hours, but this is the first time I’ve . . .” My voice trailed off. “Well, that I’ve been that small.”

“That can definitely trash your senses. It’s not something many of us do very often.” With a rumble, his pickup came around the gravel in the drive. “There you are,” he said into the phone, waving at me through the windshield as he swiped off the receiver.

Kade had food for me in the Jeep, and he was silent while I devoured five burgers, one right after the other. When I finally leaned back against the headrest of the passenger seat and blew out a breath, he said quietly, “You’re going to have to go back, you know.”

We had pulled over into a spot in the parking lot, and the park ranger was studiously—and kindly, too, I thought—ignoring us.

I had thought the same thing, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to get back to the caves, back in to both rescue the women there and take out Scott and his mother.

“They’re bound to have noticed I’m gone by now,” I said. “They might have left to search for me.”

“With any luck,” Kade agreed.

“So do we wait for the rest of the Council?” Opening a third bottle of water, I downed it. The additional food and water continued to help, but deep inside there was still something not right.

“I don’t think we can wait.” Kade gathered the wrappers from my burgers and stuffed them into their paper sack. “We need to get those women out of there.”

“There’s more,” I said. “I think they’re also the ones who have been killing shifter children.” Kade didn’t respond, but the sharp scent of anger spiked around him. “Scott showed up at the motel earlier. But I didn’t call him, and neither did Moreland. And he was there before anyone else.”

Kade nodded. “So you think he was meeting his mother there?”

“Yes. Did any of the girls talk before you left the hospital?”

“No. I left not more than fifteen minutes after you did.” He paused, glancing at me out of the corner of one swirling, golden eye. “I wanted to find you, to apologize. I had no right to grab you like that.”

Now the flavor that rolled through the cab of the Jeep carried a hint of anxiety with it as well. “I’m sorry, Lindi.”

Part of me wanted to stay angry with him, but I didn’t have the energy. Besides, when I’d been in danger, the thought of him was what had kept me going, what had allowed me to hang on to the human part of myself. “It’s okay. We can work out anything about us later. For now, we need to do what we can to save the women Scott has locked in those cages.”

* * *

In the end, we decided to take the easiest way in.

For us, that meant hiking in as human, then shifting if we needed to fight Scott and his mother.

Kade talked to the ranger. I’m not sure what he told her—probably something about making sure we had all of my belongings—but in any case, she gave him a permit and let us drive in and park the Jeep in one of the lots that fronted the hiking trails.

And then we began tracing my steps, backtracking along my trail to find the cavern that held half a dozen women who, as far as I knew, may never have even been reported missing.

Again, we passed the campsite where I had stolen the clothes, and I returned the t-shirt in favor of an extra one that had been in the back of Kade’s Jeep.

When we crossed the river, Kade paused and sniffed the air, then scanned the ground around us. “Did you stick to the river most of the way?” he asked.

“I think so.” I scanned the ground and tasted the air. “I don’t remember all of it. But any time I started to veer off the trail, I reminded myself to stick to the river, right up to the point that I found the campground and shifted.”

“If the caves they’re using are the ones I think they must be, then we’ll make better time if we go cross-country here.”

“And if they’re not?”

Kade’s brow furrowed as he peered into the dark surrounding us. “If they’re not the caves I know of, then we’ll have to come back and start over.”

I flicked my tongue out to test the air. “It’s getting close to morning now. I’m worried that they might do something to the women before we can get to them, especially if we have to backtrack.”

“I don’t think that’s very likely. In any case, though, we’ll be following the river until we get to a pass through the cliffs.” I followed behind him, watching the sky above for signs of the approaching dawn.

* * *

In my smaller serpent form, it felt like it had taken hours to get back to the state park’s main campsites. I didn’t know how much of that was due to the strange change that subjective time took on while I was in that undersized body, but it took us less than two hours to make it back to the base of the caves in our human shapes.

By the time we got there, the sky was beginning to lighten, to turn gray in the early morning.

As soon as we could see the cavern openings, we ducked down into the scrubby foliage nearby and watched for any activity.

Nothing moved. Either our presence or the lamia in the cavern had silenced the wildlife around us. The morning remained eerily silent.

Finally, Kade motioned me further away from the cliff faces. After we had retreated a sufficient distance, he put his mouth up against my ear and whispered. “I think we should come at the entrance from different directions, double our chances of getting in and setting those women free.”

I nodded, cupping my hands around my mouth and hissing a response. “When should the Council members be here?”

“I left messages for Eduardo and Janice. Neither answered, so I’m not sure when they’ll head out.” He pulled his phone out of the pocket of his jeans and waved it in the air a little, checking for a signal. “Nope. We may be in this alone.”

Okay. I could do this.

I nodded. “So how do we approach them?”

Kade pulled a twig off the ground, then knelt, sketching out a map in the dirt in front of us. “If I’m remembering correctly, there’s a path that takes you up the cliff about here.” He pointed to a spot east of us. “That’s the route that they’re most likely to take if they’re coming down, but it’s also the easiest to navigate. You take that one, but be prepared to hide, and to shift, if necessary.”

He checked to make sure I was following his explanation. “This direction”—he pointed at the west side of the hastily sketched map—“will take me up to the top of the cliff. It’s a tougher climb and there are fewer places to hide, but it’s a trade-off, because I think they’re less likely to go this way, unless they have a car parked somewhere on one of the roads above. If you want this route, you can have it.”

“Is our goal to stop them, or to get to the women?” I crouched down next to him.

“Get to the women first. Stop them if we can.” He watched me with those swirling eyes and waited for my response.

“Then I’ll take the lower trail.”

“If they come up on you, do your best to hide.” As he stood, Kade wiped out the dirt map. “Other than that, just work on getting the women free. But watch this.” Twirling one hand above the ground, he stared hard at the dirt. Within seconds, bright glints of light shimmered around his arm.

“The Earth magic,” I said.

“Use it if you need to. Don’t hesitate to shift if necessary, and take the most powerful form you can.”

“I will.” I turned to head back toward the cliff, but before I could take a step away, Kade spun me into his arms and crushed his lips to mine, hard and demanding at first, then softer. The taste of him changed, swirling into something that tasted like his eyes looked when he watched me. Something as soft as it was passionate.

When he pulled away, he whispered, “I’m sorry I yelled at you at the hospital. I panicked.”

“I think coming out to save me from the crazed lamia and her psycho son more than covers that.” I grinned, unable to hold back the expression, even in the midst of this insane rescue mission.

“If you get to the women first, get them up to the top of the cliff and head north to the road,” Kade said. “We’ll meet there, no matter what.” He paused. “But don’t wait for me. You flag down the first passing car you see and get them to the nearest hospital. Then call Kindred. Someone there will help you.”

I nodded, a knot forming in my stomach. There were so many ways this plan, thrown together as it was, could go awry.

Kade pulled me in for a last, hard kiss. “Be careful,” he whispered.

And then we split up, headed for opposite sides of the cliff face.

* * *

I had been making my way up the path for less than five minutes when I heard someone skittering down the trail above me, around a slight bend.

“If she went down this way, she’s long gone, Mother,” I heard Scott say.

They were both here, then.

Slowly, I stepped backwards down the trail to the last indentation I had seen in the wall, right at the junction of a tiny clearing that formed a wide spot in the trail.

Pulling back, I slipped into a crevasse in the rocks, drawing my arms and legs in after me. It wasn’t a deep fissure—there was no way I could keep them from seeing me.

I would have to fight.

But honestly, I had known it would come to this from the moment I had seen the other lamia. Something primitive deep within me had told me from the very beginning that she and I would clash. That one of us would end the other.

I closed my eyes and pushed into a shift. The world around me grayed out. At the same time, I tugged at the power I could feel thrumming beneath my feet. The diamante sparkles flashed into being around me, and for the first time ever, terror didn’t overcome me in the moment that I slipped from human to serpent.

I wasn’t losing my arms and legs, my mobility, my humanity.

I was taking on my power-form.

And I flowed into it.

Kade’s advice echoed through my mind.
Be the change you need.

Not just my need, though. Also Emma’s need, and Kirstie’s, and the other girls from the motel, whose names I didn’t know yet. All the women in the cave above me I hoped to rescue. And all those shifter-children whose lives I had not been able to save.

The glittering, shifting mist swirled around me faster and faster, and I followed it out of the crack in the rocks, stretching up higher and higher to wrap myself around it, in it, letting it flow through me, closing my eyelids one last time as they became transparent and froze into the brille, a scaly eyelid protecting my eyes.

When I slid out from behind the rocks into the clearing, Scott gasped.

Rising as high as I could into striking position, I towered above him.

The shape I need.

At least twenty-five feet long, some deep, clinical part of my brain noted. And patterned much like Suzy—but where she was yellow, my scales rippled with a blue-white shine that echoed the magical light of the earth-power I had drawn upon.

I shouldn’t have been able to see the color.

But I did.

With a hiss, I drew in the tastes of the world around me.

Fear flowed from Scott into my mouth, sliding down my throat like honey, slow and sweet and delicious.

But underlying the fear were the other flavors, the lust he had inflicted on the women he had attempted to breed, the joy he had taken in capturing the offspring of other shifters, the rush of power he felt as he killed them.